Opera Otago's House Operas

I've been rehearsing with four young singers and two directors over the last two and a half weeks or so (with a few more days to go). Opera Otago is presenting two 'house operas' at Olveston on the 8th, 9th and 10th of April. It's going to be interesting to see if everything we've been rehearsing will actually work in the venue, which is not strictly speaking geared for opera, even small scale ones like these two.

They're an interesting pair, put together, I'm sure with both their similarities and contrasts in mind. The first in the programme is John Drummond's Dearest Maurice, a work that lasts around forty minutes. John is a well-known figure in Dunedin music circles, and has a good deal to do with Opera Otago over a number of years. (His son Jonathan conducted the premiere of my own children's musical, Grimhilda!, back in 2012). John has written several operas, but this is the only one I've had the opportunity to work closely on.

There are two characters, a young doctor, and a mysterious woman touring in the United States as a lady's companion. The third character, Maurice, never appears, but in spite of that brings the couple together. Unintentionally.

The other piece is better known, perhaps, having been presented by the Dunedin Opera Company at least once before. It's Menotti's The Telephone, in which that instrument plays an irritating and interrupting role in keeping the pair of lovers apart.

Both are romantic pieces, the former more serious in tone, the second lighter, with definite comedy running through it. In Drummond's piece, the tenor (Ben Madden) has the bigger role, not only being onstage for most of the time, but also very busy. The soprano (Ingrid Fomison-Nurse) has her own work, and some lovely duets. In the Menotti we have the reverse: the soprano (Julia Moss-Pearson) gets the majority of the singing, while the tenor (Harry Grigg) struggles - at times - to get a word in.

Musically Dearest Maurice swings between  enthusiastic, rowdy music and lush harmonies. Menotti's music is bright, sparkling, and often funny (something music isn't always good at). The soprano has several coloratura moments as well, while the piano frequently provides the 'voice' of one or other of the various people she encounters on the phone. Mixed with these are the warm melodies and harmonies Menotti is known for.

John Drummond is producing his own opera, and Claire Barton is producing The Telephone. The two operas are presented in the same programme, and each of the three shows starts at 6 pm. The whole presentation will take around an hour and a quarter.

Southern Concert of Voices concert

Yesterday my wife and I went to the Southern Consort of Voices' Concert in the former Dominican Nuns' chapel behind St Joseph's Cathedral.  This is a lovely venue, and one that's unfamiliar to most people in Dunedin, I suspect.  Certainly I've never been there before, though admittedly when I was younger the building would have been off-limits to most people, particularly males.  It was part of the large Dominican convent complex, and the only other time I remember being in the complex was when we performed a play in the Hall. How that came about I can't remember, but I think it was quite a daunting place for the audience to find!  (The play was An Inspector Calls, the first play produced by the Marlowe Players, a group long since disbanded.)

The Dominicans have long since moved on from this complex, and it's now cared for by the Diocese as a whole, I assume.  I imagine the building gets a certain amount of use by the local parish these days.

The choir was somewhat bigger than the last time I saw them, at least as far as the women were concerned, and was in very good voice.  Their programme was focused around Otago composers (with a couple of ring-ins who only just made it because of some connection with the area) and was an interesting mix.  Four of the eight composers were in the audience: Corwin Newall, Alan Edwards, Alex Campbell-Hunt and Anthony Ritchie.  Newall is a current music student at Otago, and Campbell-Hunt has just completed a Mus B there.)

Newall's piece was a setting of the Ave Maria and was quite an ambitious piece for the choir to open with, but they did it well and it communicated itself to the audience.  This was followed by two pieces  composed by Richard Madden, both of them familiar: Bullulalow and I Sing of a Maiden.  Madden has a lovely expressive gift and the second of these two pieces has one of the sweetest tunes around.

Leanne Veitch's Sing Christmas is a boisterous piece that leaves the choir gasping for breath at the end - effective, but not something you'd want to sing twice in a row.  Alan Edwards' I will sing to the Lord was short and didn't make a particular impact on me on first hearing.  I suspect it's a piece you need to become familiar with to enjoy thoroughly.

The final piece in the first half (all the pieces here had some religious link) was The Lord Bless You and Keep You.  It was composed by Michael Winikoff in memory of his father - Winikoff is a regular member of the choir but was overseas yesterday.  The words of the blessing are ones that Winikoff's father would use to his family and they are sung in both English and Hebrew during the course of the piece.  There's also a violin obbligato.   The piece has a lovely, slightly unusual setting of the English words, and then gradually introduces the Hebrew.  Finally the two are sung together forming a rich and evocative sound.   This piece went down well with the audience. 


In the second half we had three settings of poems by Emily Dickinson, composed by Christopher Marshall.  To Hear the Oriole Sing was lovely, I'm Nobody a delight and the piece that the audience responded most quickly to; Hope is the Thing with Feathers was less engaging on first hearing.  One difficulty with choral works is that the words can easily be lost in the mix of harmonies and counterpoints.  A couple of pieces suffered a little from this, particularly the third of the Marshall songs.  Without the words, the music can lose its point to a degree.  As a listener you resign yourself to not being able to tell what's being sung, but this isn't ideal.  Naturally it requires a great deal of effort on the choir's part to communicate the words distinctly, and often with the complexity of the music taking up much of their attention, this gets put in second place.  Anthony Ritchie's piece, Piano Practice, which came later in the concert, began with clear words.  These became more obscured, however, as time went on, and the point of the poem got lost - for me. 


Alex Campbell-Hunt's piece, Late Wisdom, is another that probably requires two or three hearings to get the feel at home with.  Not that it was particularly complex; it just didn't pick up the ears quite so readily on first hearing. 


Anthony Ritchie's three pieces were last on the programme.  In the Summer Fields has a Hungarian 

Bodhrán 

flavour to it, and came across well.  As I said Piano Practice missed out in terms of words, but is a lovely piece otherwise.   Song of Hope was another of those pieces that require some familiarity.   There's nothing that can be done about this in the process of a single concert!  


This was a pretty ambitious concert overall, with the singers being required to sing complex parts and pitch some difficult leaps - some also had to whistle, play bells and a bodhrán.   There were many beautiful moments when chords hung wonderfully in the air and on the ear, and when harmonies shifted magically.  

Hectic weekend

Spent the bulk of last Saturday at the Brass Band provincial contests.  I'd mentioned in a previous post how I was supposed to be playing Variations on a Welsh Theme, and how the soloist had had to pull out.   What was the first piece I heard on arriving at the competition?  Variations on a Welsh Theme, being played (and very nicely too) by someone else.

As has been the case with most days recently, it was beautiful and hot on Saturday, and many of the brass banders would have been happy to have sat outside relaxing, I think, instead of having to perform before audiences.  Still most of them survived, and we had some good placings amongst the folk I played for, including two or three firsts.

In the evening my wife and I went to a 6 pm showing of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel which has a cast that most directors would die for: director John Madden somehow managed to corral them all together for this relatively slight piece that's made enjoyable because of the people in it.  It concerns a disparate group of oldies who independently decide to take up the offer of a particular Indian hotel to accommodate them in what is effectively an old people's home without the use of that phrase.

Judi Dench takes a leading role, along with Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Celia Imrie, Penelope Wilton and Ronald Pickup.  Dev Patel, from Slumdog Millionaire, is the hotel's young proprietor, a man with more ambition and ideas than commonsense.   Of course all works out well in the end - for him, anyway.  One or two or the oldies come a bit unstuck in the process.  Penelope Wilton, unfortunately, is saddled with the role of a whining woman who just never shifts from that position.  It's not far from her rather petulant mother in Downton Abbey, and it would have been nice to see her in a different kind of role.

Sunday, after church in the morning, I went to the rehearsal for Grimhilda!  Things are a long way from perfection, but we're getting there.  I've been acting as répétiteur (the common name for rehearsal pianist, but used less now than it used to be) for the rehearsals, and it's interesting to find that even though I wrote the music there are times when I don't seem to be hitting the notes too well.  Of course, when the music was being written, I was playing it all the time.  Now that the writing is some months behind me, it's becoming like any piece of music does when you don't practice it regularly: a bit slapdash.  Still, répétiteurs commonly don't play all the notes, so I'm not doing anything unusual!


At the rehearsal last night I took a photo of the Parrot in his (still to be slightly amended) costume: you've no doubt already noticed the photo.  It's not the best picture, and we'll get some better ones done in due course - this is just to give you a taste of the colour of this particular costume...


On Sunday evening, I had to play for a local singer, Sarah Oliver, in a concert put on by the NZ Foundation Youth Pipe Band.   The band was doing a very quick tour of NZ (four rather scattered centres) and then heading off to Sydney for an Australian contest.  Sarah was a guest artist, as had been other singers in other centres.   The rest of the concert consisted of performances by the NZFYPB - a group of young pipers and drummers from around the country, some dancers and a local pipe band from John McGlashan College. 


Sarah and I ensconced ourselves in a small dressing room, with the door shut, because the noise of the pipes in a theatre that size was pretty loud and made its way through all parts of the building.  The pipers were a talented bunch, there's no doubt, as were the drummers.  Very sharp and accurate and in general a credit to New Zealand.  I hope they're doing well in Oz. 


I got home about 10.30 feeling as though I'd done my dash for the week....

Debut

Last night, at the RSA Choir concert (that's the Returned Services Association Choir) I made my debut as a singer with the acapella group, Sunny Side Up. I wrote about them back in May after going to a concert in which they were one of several singing groups. At the time I said to my wife, if I was going to join any singing group, it would be them. At a meal with several people a couple of weeks later, three of whom were members of SSU, the subject of me thinking about joining them came up, and a week later I'd started going to their Sunday afternoon rehearsals. And then a couple of weeks later my wife started to come too.

I've always enjoyed singing, and though New Zealand society on the surface seems to imply that it's not a thing for males to do, plenty of them around the country do it. In fact the two soloists at the concert last night were young men, and the 50-plus RSA choir is (still) all male. (There's another all-male choir here in Dunedin too: the Royal Male Choir, and plenty of secondary schools have male choirs.)

I grew up in a Catholic family, so we always sang at church - admittedly it was the same half dozen songs, year in and year out, taken off a cardboard sheet that had been printed before I was born, I suspect; it was still in use when I left my home town in the 60s. And as a young pianist I used to sing my way through complete musical comedy scores. No one ever commented that it didn't sound that hot, but I suspect it didn't always.

And then I was continually involved with singers from my teenage years, as an accompanist - that's continued to this day. After my wife and I came back from overseas we joined a Pentecostal Church, where the singing could go on for half an hour or more before the preacher got up to speak. So singing's 'in the blood' as it were.

The only time I've ever sung solo in a concert, that I can remember, was maybe 15 years ago when a group I was involved in presented a night of George Gershwin songs. The director had found one called 'Blah blah blah blah blah' (yup!) and as a bit of a joke, I sang it and accompanied myself. I think it put that particular director off my singing for good: he's never encouraged me to sing since...

Anyway, as a member of the thirty-plus-strong SSU, my singing blends, (read: doesn't stand out). I wondered once or twice last night if a note I was singing wasn't quite what the rest of the basses were singing, but the notes still seemed to harmonise!

SSU music is often lively, and in the slower songs, full of striking harmonies. My wife and I have heard the group on a number of occasions over the years, and have always been attracted to their particular sound. Last night we sang a couple of African-based songs (easy for the basses: we provide an ongoing rhythmic line underneath), a fabulous arrangement of Total Praise, the powerful Up Above My Head and a joyful spiritual. And we sing again on Sunday, at Knox Church, along with several other choirs. Different songs, mostly, so it's quite a full-on week for the group.

The RSA itself was in good form, though we missed the first part of the first half of the show, being backstage getting ready. I particularly liked Shenadoah and Cwm Rhondda (which was sung in its English version: Guide me, O thou great Jehovah). Some of the faster songs suffer a bit from so many voices trying to get their tongues around lots of words in a way that's tidy, but there seemed to be plenty of energy in the choir, which is great - the oldest singer is ninety (!)

The two soloists were Ben Madden and Alex Wilson, and, from what I heard of them, these are splendid pair of voices, with promising careers ahead of them.